Toronto voters were heading to the polls on Monday to replace Mayor Rob Ford, the bombastic figure who rose to international fame after revelations surfaced about his use of crack cocaine, and who dropped out of the race in September after announcing that he had a rare form of cancer.

At the end of a long and often bitter campaign, the race has coalesced around three candidates: former Progressive Conservative party leader John Tory, former New Democratic Party MP Olivia Chow, and Doug Ford, Rob’s brother and erstwhile campaign manager, who announced his intention to run when the mayor was diagnosed with malignant pleomorphic liposarcoma.

Despite his late entry, Doug Ford is polling in second place with 32% of the vote, according to a Mainstreet technologies poll on 24 October, which put him just six points behind frontrunner John Tory. Chow trailed in third place at 20%. A City News / Forum Research poll on Sunday put the gap slightly wider, with Ford 12 points behind Tory, who led with 44%.

“We’re a class act here in Toronto,” Shirley Townshend told the Guardian as she waited to be picked up from a shopping mall where Doug Ford had just held an event. She wanted to make clear she was having none of the Fords.

“I think it’s disgusting,” she said of the scandal surrounding them. “It’s brought a lot of disgrace on the city.” She said that she was probably voting for Chow, but that – like many here – her mind was not completely made up.

Tory, who has just finished an exhaustive tour of all 44 wards of the city, is a radio broadcaster and progressive conservative who came second in the 2003 election and has none of the Ford brothers’ aggression.

At a campaign event in Thorncliffe Park, a racially diverse area of high-rise blocks about 20 minutes north-east of downtown Toronto, a group was preparing to greet the candidate in the lobby of an apartment block.

“When he comes, we clap and chant ‘Tory! Tory!’,” Abdul Ingar, a community leader and the former president of the local mosque, tells the gathered crowd of 40 or so residents and interested bystanders. Outside the meeting, a father was pushing his child back and forth in a stroller. “He seems like a nice guy,” he said of Tory with a shrug.

The campaign trail has been long and exhausting. A Toronto mayoral election is a marathon, and there have been over 60 debates in the last few months.

Toronto, since the sprawling outlying suburbs were integrated into the greater city in 1998, has been a city of differing districts and class distinctions. Much of the politics here is just about making each region feel noticed. That is what Rob Ford did for the blue-collar outer boroughs in 2010, and the Ford appeal is still very strong in some of the working-class outer suburbs.

Tory, with his whistlestop 44-ward tour, also understands the importance of the politics of being present. “We’re happy that on election eve, he came here,” Ingar told the Guardian. “That means he cares for the community.” When he addressed the assembly, he told them “we need to bring the city back together,” and that “we need to stand together,” a riposte to what is seen as the divisive outer-vs-inner borough tactics of the Ford campaign.

Ismael Motala, an elderly resident, agreed. “We will be pleased when he is selected because he came here. Others have not come.”

The race has been volatile. Doug Ford’s decision to step in at the 11th hour gave the “Ford Nation” supporters with a candidate to back. But a steady stream of scandal dogged the Rob Ford campaign even before his illness forced him to drop out.

Meanwhile, over a long summer’s campaigning, Tory advanced slowly and steadily on Chow, who started as the frontrunner but whose support slipped away in the face of a storm of negative advertising from the Ford camp.

“I never ran a negative ad,” Tory told the Guardian. “I think people liked that.” He said that people were tired of what he called the “US Tea Party-style of politics”.

He said that the switch of the Ford brothers had no effect on his campaign, “because they come from a very similar place, they have a similar style of politics that is quite combative.” He said that “you really didn’t notice the switching out of one brother for the other in the debates.”

On Sunday, the Toronto Sun printed a cartoon depicting Chow as Chairman Mao, riding the coat-tails of her deceased husband, popular politician Jack Layton. Many condemned the cartoon as racist, and Chow herself called it “disgusting”, “racist” and “sexist”. It was the latest ugly event in a campaign that often dipped into ugliness.

There was a new attack from Doug Ford on John Tory on Sunday, accusing him of being in the pocket of wealthy donors. When asked about this, Tory’s exhaustion became almost, but not quite, visible on the surface. “Its one of those things where he had nothing better to say,” he told the Guardian. “I’m disappointed that he had nothing better to say on the eve of the election.”

Morgan Baskin is also running for mayor. She is the youngest candidate on the ticket; she was 18 when she announced her candidacy, and is running on a platform of youth engagement in politics.

She told the Guardian that she sees a city still divided. “We have not had any big conversations about a lot of our class divisions, or about race,” she said, adding that she had seen campaign signs had vandalised with racist graffiti, and extreme sexist reactions to female candidates. “Those things are happening, and we’re not having a conversation about them.”

Tory’s lead is commanding. But after a campaign of heart-stopping twists and turns, the result is by no means a foregone conclusion. The new mayor of Winnipeg, Brian Bowman, came back from trailing a full 18 points to win on 22 October.

“Olivia’s team has been working incredibly hard; there’s been a lot of support for John, and Doug Ford is still polling incredibly high,” said Baskin. “Anything can happen.”